Education Reform Slow in Coming

By ED SEALOVER THE GAZETTE

DENVER – Gov. Bill Ritter listed educational improvements as his first priority in his Colorado Promise campaign book, but near the end of his first session in office, little has changed in the way students will learn next year.

Though the Democratic governor’s plan to increase school funding by $50 million is making its way through the Legislature, bills to require greater student proficiency in math, science and English were rejected.

Ritter and Rep. Mike Merrifield, who is expected to resume his duties as chairman of the House Education Committee in January, said they think big changes will come next year, after a new education panel finishes its work.

If so, then the educational legacy of the 2007 general session may be this: a number of audits, a few changes to make standardized test scores easier to interpret and waiting for the big picture to be unveiled.

“There have been a lot of ideas about education in this building this year, and what I think is we have to be careful about piecemealing them,” Ritter said recently. “It’s a bad idea in some ways to just piecemeal legislation, to put pieces in place without looking at the broad picture.”

But Rep. Victor Mitchell, who sits on the House Education Committee, said he is frustrated that honest attempts at reform were shot down by a group of Democrats beholden to teachers unions.

“Education’s really been about three things this year: less choice, less accountability, more money,” said Mitchell, a Republican who represents Teller County.

That reform is needed is beyond question: High school graduation rates rest below 70 percent for every demographic group except for white females, Mitchell noted, citing Department of Education statistics. And, nearly half of freshmen entering in-state colleges need remediation.

Ritter’s often-repeated goals are twofold: cut the dropout rate in half and reduce the achievement gap between welloff white students and poor minorities by 50 percent.

In March, he unveiled a proposal to freeze property tax rates and use the money to increase preschool classes for at-risk populations and full-day kindergarten across the state. Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs, said the money generated would have an impact for years to come.

But as the plan that still awaits Senate approval has been altered amid controversy over whether it is a tax increase, its money no longer is directed toward fullday kindergarten. And 4,000 new preschool slots have been added to the School Finance Act with another source of funding.

Beyond that, Merrifield had two bills, one of which has been signed into law, that allow educators to more easily monitor an individual student’s year-to-year progress in standardized tests and to combine three report cards on the tests into one to help people understand how schools are doing.

“I think all in all it has been a good year, especially with the passage of the (property tax freeze),” Merrifield said after it received House approval Friday.

The General Assembly has gotten attention for what it hasn’t done as well.

Republicans offered a bill to require students to take four years of math and three years of science, while Democrats floated a proposal that would mandate students to be proficient in speaking and reading English before they can graduate. Both passed through the Senate but were killed in the House Education Committee.

Merrifield said the ideas were too narrowly focused and would lead to increased dropout rates or take away other student options, such as art and music classes. He is not opposed to such ideas being studied in a broader context.

But Rep. Rob Witwer, the House sponsor of the math and science plan, noted that Democrats pushed through a bill to standardize state sexual education teaching that now sits before Ritter — and yet said local districts should control math and science requirements.

“To me, math, science and English are more at the core of the educational mission than sex ed,” said Witwer, R-Golden. “I have to question whether we went forward or backwards in this session. I think we went backwards.”

Mitchell said the Legislature has done nothing to address three significant areas: low graduation rates, high remediation requirements and low rates of students who get college degrees in four years.

He laid blame partly on the fact that six of the eight Democrats on the House Education Committee are teachers’ union members. Merrifield said in reply that this shows they know how to work with kids in classrooms.

Such ties also accounted for several unsuccessful attempts to cut down on the freedom of charter schools, Mitchell said. Merrifield stepped down from his chairmanship of the House Education Committee in March after an e-mail he wrote bashing charter school supporters was made public.

“You’ve got terrible post-graduation rates, you’ve got low graduation rates… and yet, if you talk to my fellow members on the other side of the aisle, they don’t want to act bold,” Mitchell said. “Until we can change and bring in more Republicans who think more about market-based solutions, you’re going to hear a lot of talk and a lot of kicking the can down the road.”

Ritter has yet to name members of his recently announced P-20 panel, which will examine alignment issues and potential changes from preschool through graduate school. The council, which will report to the governor and the Legislature, will look at 11 topics, including expansion of early childhood education, reduction of the number of dropouts and improvement in transitions between high school and college.

But Mitchell said he does not expect reform ideas to come out of it.

Merrifield, who hopes to serve on some of the panel’s subcommittees, said he thinks that the 2008 session will see more bills dealing with major educational changes.

“Maybe they can look at issues in a less political atmosphere and more clinically,” Merrifield said.

While Ritter looks for new ways of funding and legislators look for new angles to cover, some in both parties feel that the movement is too slow.

“I think we feel frustrated,” said Senate President Joan Fitz- Gerald, D-Coal Creek Canyon. “There are things we want to do.

“When you’re talking about that many students in a state that big and unmet needs, you can’t do that without a major change in funding sources,” she said. “It’s going to take sacrifice. We’re going to have to find a way to do it.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: (303) 837-0613 or ed.sealover@gazette.com.

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